I stumbled onto a rather detailed report of a tense encounter between Vladimir Putin and American Secretary of State John Kerry over U.S. toleration of chemical pesticides that are destroying bee populations and thus threatening the entire food chain. Since the source was unfamiliar, I Googled the topic, too.
What struck me in the Google results was the frequency with which the confrontation was characterized as Putin “threatening war.”
If not war, what, pray tell, is the eventuality of the world’s sole remaining Superpower putting corporate profits above the world’s entire food chain? Mightn’t “warning of the likelihood that nations will rise up against those who’d bring about mass starvation” have been a better way to put it?
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Then today, the American Conservative’s Scott McConnell touches on modern war in Terror, Immigration and Blowback: A Mess That Needs Sorting:
No subject splits me down the middle like [mass immigration]. I just returned from five days in in Paris, where I found that I oppose Muslim rioters, Muslim terrorists, and Muslim free-speech intimidators as fervently as any yob from the English Defense League. When I read of the British soldier who was hacked to death by some self-styled Nigerian jihadist (who speaks fluent English and was raised in Britain in a Christian home) I think, basically, Britain would be every bit within its rights to deport a million Muslims. As for Stockholm and its rioters, forget about it. The Swedish ministers who thought it a good idea to import rapidly a population of Somalis into a fairly healthy homogenous society should probably be tried for treason. And the Somali rioters, give them ten thousand dollars and an airline ticket be done with them.
And yet, and yet. It is hard to dismiss entirely the argument of the London jihadi—your soldiers can’t be safe when your drones, your soldiers, kill innocent Muslims every day. We in America are almost completely shielded from the violence we inflict; unlike the Vietnam war, this one isn’t televised. It is waged by professional soldiers who “protect our freedoms” as the beginning-to-sound-tiresome phrase goes, far from our sight. We honor them on Memorial Day by dressing major league baseball players in desert camouflage hats for an evening, a gesture born of guilty conscience. Few of us really believe anymore the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have much to do with our freedom, even if we pretend otherwise. Such falsehoods have become emotionally necessary, to absolve us of having this huge class of less fortunate young Americans face danger all the time so that most of us don’t have to. Indeed, we barely have to know about it.
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I feel safe in betting that at least one in hundred young Muslim immigrants in the West wants to do something violent in return. Given the immigrant numbers, in Europe especially, that’s quite a few potential terrorists.
Seldom has an essay so compactly and articulately reflected my own thought as that. Call it “blaming the victim” if you like, Mr. McCoy. The Hatfields call it “blowback.”
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 